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NCAC: Research & Solutions: Curriculum: Effective Classroom Practices

Effective Classroom Practices

The National Center on Access to the General Curriculum (NCAC) at CAST has been reviewing the literature on effective classroom practices. The selection of classroom practices is based on input from partner membership and the literature addressing curriculum access. Most practices have a rich empirical history in general and/or special education research.

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Supported by theory and research, each Classroom Practices report is written to provide the reader with a definition and description of essential features and attributes. Evidence of effectiveness is presented based on foundational and current research. The applications of each practice to the general education setting are addressed and finally, each report includes links to Web sites by primary researchers, developers, practitioners and users which contain information, examples and applications about the classroom practice. Each link, as well as the references used to create each document, contains a summary description.

Effective classroom practices with empirical validation have direct application to Universal Design for Learning. It is the intention of these reviews to introduce the reader to these practices and to provide examples of their use in a range of settings, most importantly, general education classrooms. Several illustrations of these practices may be seen in case stories now being prepared by NCAC.

The six classroom practices listed below were chosen for review. Links to completed reviews are provided. Links to reviews for the other practices will be made available on completion.

• Explicit Instruction
• Differentiated Instruction
• Curriculum-Based Evaluation
• Peer-Mediated Instruction and Intervention
• Classroom Management
• Strategic Instruction

The K8AccessCenter at AIR and CAST have collaborated to extend the original enhancement documents to includes significant sections on implications for Universal Design for Learning. Classroom practice documents with implications for UDL implementation:

• Differentiated Instruction with UDL

Acknowledgements: NCAC at CAST would like to acknowledge the contributions of our Boston College partner through research assistants Missy Mengel and Andrea Steliga.